In this nationwide prospective study, Meier and colleagues observe that a prior diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) increases the risk to subsequently develop schizophrenia. In addition, the children of parents diagnosed with OCD were at increased risk to develop schizophrenia. These increments in risk suggest that these 2 disorders might share etiological mechanisms or that OCD represents 1 developmental pathway to schizophrenia.

After removing the effects of season in a 40-year time-series of daily data, Vyssoki and colleagues examine the association between numbers of suicides and sunshine duration in Austria. They reported that daily sunshine duration was significantly correlated with the frequency of suicides. The correlation was strongest at the index day of suicide but significant for as long as 10 days prior to suicide and negative for 14 to 60 days prior to the index day.

Grosshans and colleagues examine associations between plasma levels of the satiety molecule oleoylethanolamide and functional magnetic resonance imaging responses to food stimuli in obese patients and matched control participants. This association differed significantly between groups for activation in the right anterior and posterior insula involved in integration of interoceptive processing of sensory information, suggesting a specific obesity-related and oleoylethanolamide-linked neural mechanism that impairs hedonic food regulation in humans.

Using positron emission tomography and the radioligand [11C]LY2795050, Pietrzak and colleagues show that thatκ-opioid receptor availability in an amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex-ventral striatal neural circuit and corticotropin releasing factor/hypothalamic-adrenal pituitary-adrenal axis system function mediate the phenotypic expression of trauma-related loss (dysphoria) symptoms. Such data may ultimately help to inform the development of new, more targeted, and transdiagnostic treatments for this core and often most disabling aspect of the trauma-related phenotype.

Mason and colleagues investigate links between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and food addiction among women in the Nurses’ Health Study II. They report a dose-response association between number of lifetime PTSD symptoms and prevalence of food addiction. Women who reported the most PTSD symptoms were 2.7 times as likely to meet food addiction criteria as women with no PTSD symptoms. Food addiction prevalence was elevated further when PTSD symptoms began in early life.